For "Sally Belle" on Our Birthday

Every September, I spend a lot of time thinking about one of my dearest friends, Leslie. It’s not the whole “back to school” vibe or the dawn of another season of Rebel football, though I guess that does factor in a bit. It is because we share the same birthday, September 7th, a fact we discovered during an ice-breaker circle on bid day 1991 at the Ole Miss ZTA house. But this year, as we get ready to mark our 36th birthdays, I find I am thinking of her even more than usual. It’s not like there is normally anything particularly special about 36. It lacks the excitement of 10 (FINALLY double digits, yay!!), or the freedom of 16 (can I have the keys, dad?), or the, uh, responsibility of 21 (please let him card me, pleeease let him card me…), or even the actual responsibility of 25 (I’d like to rent a car, please). In fact, pretty much since I turned 30 I find I have to quickly subtract 1973 from the current year to even remember my own age when I have to fill out a form. That’s just how unspectacular adult birthdays become after a certain age. But for me, for us, 36 IS a bit of a watershed moment. On Sunday, Leslie and I will have known each other for 18 years. Hence the significance of 36 – we have now known each other for half our lives. And as of Monday, on our actual birthday, at 18 years and one day, the years we have known each other will eclipse the years before we met.

That we met at all is proof enough that there are greater forces at work in the universe. One would be hard-pressed to have found two more utterly, completely, undeniably different co-eds on any college campus on the face of the earth. I was a city kid who talked quickly and without an accent which, despite being born and raised in the hometown of General Robert E. Lee, quickly earned me the distinction of being “from the north” (luckily, I was also polite and shy which spared me the dreaded added insult of being labeled a “Yankee” by my new campus-mates). Leslie was a small-town girl from Arkansas who started school with a drawl so pronounced it was difficult for me to even understand her at first. I was a three-sport athlete at a very large, very diverse suburban high school situated just beyond the shadow of our nation’s capital. She was a cheerleader at a tiny, rural high school situated in Arkansas rice country. I grew up thinking I could barely stand to take yet another field trip to the Smithsonian or the Library of Congress. She grew up looking forward to hour-and-a-half to two-hour trips to Pine Bluff or Little Rock where you could go to an actual mall (and in the days before online shopping, that was a BIG deal for a teenaged girl). My dad was a life-long employee of good old, reliable Uncle Sam, working in the heart of D.C. and guaranteed a decent pension and benefits in his retirement. Her dad was a rice farmer, working dawn ‘til dusk during planting and harvesting seasons and waiting on pins and needles in the months between, his fortune and future squarely in the hands of a different and less benevolent relative, Mother Nature. I was the younger of two children born to parents who, by 1970’s standards, were getting a bit long in the tooth. She was the unexpected older of what would eventually be two children born to a very young mother and father. She was a pageant queen who knew all sorts of things about make-up, and hot rollers, and devices called “butt pads” and how to use them. I was a total plain Jane who didn’t wear make-up, had the fashion sense of a hobo, and generally stuck out like a sore thumb among my well-coifed and well-dressed fellow freshmen.

The biggest difference, however, was our personalities. Leslie had (and still has) a million-watt smile that lights up a room. And as big as that smile can get, it is dwarfed by her personality. Leslie has never met a stranger. She can talk to anyone about anything. She can carry on a 20 minute conversation with someone who barely speaks a word of English…I’ve witnessed it. I’ve heard it said that some people are so outgoing they could talk to a wall. Leslie is so outgoing she could get the wall to talk back. I, on the other hand, might have best been described as “mousey”, and that is if the person doing the describing was being generous. I, too, might have been found talking to a wall, though in my case it would have been because I was too shy to attempt a conversation with an actual person.

So we certainly made for an odd pairing when we found ourselves sitting directly across from each other during the sorority’s mandated freshman study hall on the afternoon of Friday, September 6, 1991. Leslie had just returned from the student union building where she picked up a package from home. To this day, I don’t know if she has ever realized how difficult it was for me to force the shyness and social anxiety aside to strike up a conversation that afternoon. As I recall, I said something terribly interesting along the lines of, “Birthday gift?” She looked a little confused as to why I would have known that, so I reminded her I was the other pledge who shared her birthday. To protect the innocent (and the guilty), I’ll spare the details of what was in the box. Suffice it to say we were giggling with each other in a matter of minutes. By the end of study hall, we’d been “shhhhed” by the monitor at least half a dozen times. On that day, a beautiful friendship was born.

Within weeks, we were virtually inseparable. I think we were both smart enough to understand the fleeting bliss that was college. We recognized that never before and never again would there be so much freedom with so little responsibility and we made the most of it. When we met new people, we’d tell them we were twins separated at conception. Over the next four years, our exploits were legendary, in our minds, anyway. There was the fraternity party we attended in togas made from our matching Laura Ashley sheets with door wreaths on our heads. Or the night of our 19th birthday when, for reasons that still escape me, we put bathing suits on over our clothes and walked across campus to visit friends in the middle of the night (no, we had actually not been drinking at the time - it is an event that is memorialized by a photo on my mousepad). There were times we’d lay in wait in our room at the sorority house to ambush our sisters with nerf guns as they walked past (God love those girls for putting up with our grabassery). There were road trips and football games, partying and even some occasional studying (I did still manage to graduate cum laude). My parents adored her. Her parents never could quite figure me out or what we had in common, but they knew I was mostly a good influence, so they welcomed me with open arms. When I really think hard about those years, I realize there were some rough patches along the way. But what I mostly remember is laughter. We laughed all the time, and made others laugh with and at us a fair part of the time, too. When we were together, we were fearless and confident. In each other, we had a friend we could trust completely. For the first time, we had someone outside our own families who had seen us at our worst and stuck it out anyway.

Through the magic of Facebook, I have connected with a number of people from my past. But Leslie is one of my only “old” friends with whom I never lost contact. That is a credit mostly to her, as she is much better about picking up the phone and calling than am I. As is so often the case in these kinds of stories, life has certainly intervened. She actually moved with me when I got my first TV job in Winston-Salem. But there wasn't much opportunity for her there so she moved to Baltimore where she had worked summers with her Aunt for several years. When I moved here, we would see each other very occasionally. We both met and married wonderful men - hers, a more quiet and reserved guy, mine, a gregarious, outgoing man (hmmm...coincidence???) We were in each other's weddings and tried to get together during the summers when we could. But she moved to Dallas a few years back and, despite the best of intentions, time, finances and schedules never seem to synch up to allow for a visit here, there, or in Oxford. I think the last time I actually saw Leslie was when she came here to help with the surprise 60th birthday party we threw for my mother. Mom turned 67 this year. But part of what makes our friendship so special is that we can pick up right where we left off. Granted, there is always a fair number of “good old days” tales passed back and forth, but we can also talk about the newer stuff, even though we don’t share the same day-to-day lives anymore. No one makes anyone feel guilty for having to move the friendship onto the back burner while the more immediate concerns of jobs (or lack thereof) and husbands and children and aging parents move to the forefront. And we still laugh easily, freely, and often.

So, our 36th birthday seems an appropriate time to say thank you to the dear friend I have known for half my life. In many ways, we have grown up together. I terribly miss seeing you every day, but know the future will bring more opportunities to visit as schedules get less crowded and the needs of our growing children don’t require every waking moment, anymore. Mostly, I want you to know that I love you like family and I am so thankful you are part of my life; I am truly better off for having met you. Happy birthday, Les! I am putting my bathing suit on over my pajamas right now in our honor and Rick says hi ; ) .